SEATTLE — Golden Globe winning actress and Mountlake High School graduate Lily Gladstone stars in new movie “Fancy Dance.”
Set in Oklahoma on the Seneca-Cayuga Nation Reservation, the film centers on the ongoing crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women.
Gladstone gives a stunning performance as Jax, a Native woman whose sister is missing. Local and federal law enforcement aren’t devoting resources to the case, so she tries to unlock the mystery on her own. Meantime, she’s also caring for her teenage niece Roki (beautifully played by newcomer Isabel DeRoy-Olson.)
When the state determines Jax is unfit to be a foster parent and grants custody to Roki’s white grandfather, the aunt and niece skip town to attend a powwow – a decision with lasting consequences.
The film mixes grief and trauma with humor and hope to create a rich portrayal of life on and off the reservation – and the role Native women play in holding families together. It also features subtitles for scenes using the nearly-extinct Cayuga language.
Entertainment reporter Kim Holcomb talked to Gladstone, DeRoy-Olson and director/co-writer Erica Tremblay about the impact and reach of the film.
HOLCOMB: "I've heard you both (Gladstone and DeRoy-Olson) say when you initially met, there was this instant connection. Can you tell me the one quality about the other person that sort of sealed the deal for you?"
GLADSTONE: "Oh, there's not just one quality. It's an essence, I guess. We kind of say the same thing with the same tone and intonation around the same time, if not at the same time. So, it's always a little like (leans back). Whoa."
DEROY-OLSON: "The thing that stuck out the most to me about Lily is just how you make people feel. It's very welcoming and it's very genuine and generous."
HOLCOMB: "You won the Lynn Shelton grant from the NW Film Forum?"
TREMBLAY: "Every penny of that grant was poured into this film. We absolutely could not have made this film without the support of that grant. We're so grateful, and what an honor to be one of the recipients of Lynn Shelton's legacy."
HOLCOMB: "Have you been on a road trip that did change your life, even if it was only for a couple of days, and even if it wasn't under great circumstances necessarily?”
DEROY-OLSON: (laughter) “Absolutely. I live in Vancouver and I drive to Winnipeg every summer with my family to go to Ceremony, which is very important to us. So, it's been a big part of our life."
GLADSTONE: "(During COVID) I went on my own little solo road trip, just like the character in the film, and got to visit White Sands for the first time. Feeling the immensity of that place, there was something that felt very connected. And then just a few months later I think it was published that they found 40,000 year old footprints at White Sands, so the eldest of our ancestors were walking those lands. There was something that just felt really significant about that - to touch base with something that felt connected to something so ancient, since time immemorial, people have been there."
HOLCOMB: "Can you talk about the value of the Cayuga language being an integral part of this film?”
TREMBLAY: “As a language learner myself, I was inspired by the language. I was studying eight hours a day at the time the screenplay was being written. I'm very moved by the people who are so actively re-vitalizing our language and one of the things I thought I could do to be part of that process was put it in a movie and have a modern-day story where young people are speaking the language fluently. There are less than 20 first-language speakers left of our language, it's considered nearly extinct. But we're not going to let that happen. I got the chance to screen the film for some elders. It was the first time in their 80, 90 years of life that they’d seen their language on the screen. One of them squeezed my cheeks and was like, 'Good job!' And there's no bigger stamp of approval."
HOLCOMB: "What role or difference have ‘other mothers’ played in your lives?"
GLADSTONE: "Oh tremendous, it's huge. I feel like you never really outgrow the need for a matriarch. You pass through these seasons of your life and then suddenly it's like, 'Oh wow, I'm the auntie now. I still feel like I'm her age. (laughter) You need those women and those ladies in your life constantly. In my 'auntie era,' I guess, I recently felt like a little girl again. My nation (Blackfeet Nation,) everybody together agreed to bring me into Women's Standup Headdress Society. You just feel loved and embraced by all of these amazing women that are now like your sisters, your society sisters, your society aunties, they're an extension of yourself. These are the people who take care of us and hold us together."
HOLCOMB: “I loved how there was a through-line of hope in the movie.”
TREMBLAY: "The way Native Americans have been portrayed for so long, especially in a true crime sense, is you have a white character, a white cop, a white savior, that's coming to these Native communities to save them. And you only see into the Native world, like maybe they go to question someone in a trailer and you see a peek through the door and it's always this poverty porn. And that is not the way it feels being in these communities. There's a lot of love and laughter that exists inside of these spaces and inside of these homes. And we wanted to tell this story through the perspective of the Native people. (Jax and Roki) survive it by loving each other and loving their community and loving their culture. And that is how we've been surviving the ongoing genocide of Native people for 500 years - we've had to do it with grace, we've had to do it with hope. You can't survive an ongoing genocide without hope. We use a lot of humor to connect with each other and we wanted to feel that humanity and express that humanity through Jax and Roki. I love the moments where audiences laugh out loud, and I think it's through those moments of love and those moments of levity of the film that non-Native folks will be able to identify with these characters. Everyone's experienced grief. Everyone's experienced loss. My hope is that non-Native folks will recognize that humanity and do their best to be better citizens to their native neighbors."
“Fancy Dance” is rated R. It streams on Apple TV+ June 28 and will show theatrically at Seattle’s Grand Illusion Cinema and Northwest Film Forum in July.
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